Abstract
The chapters in this volume are united by their focus on understanding and exploring the meanings of masculinity/masculinities and relationalities as critical concepts in gender studies. As a whole, the volume presents the breadth and usefulness, as well as the complexities, of the concept of masculinity in various fields of research. We hold that it is vital, not least from a feminist perspective, to complicate critical investigations of masculinities as relationally constructed by scrutinizing which relations produce, construct, or maintain masculinity within a certain gendered system of power, such as the nation, the family, and the workplace, as well as exploring exactly how this is done. Relationality is closely connected to the social construction of gender (Butler 1990, 2004; Connell 1995; Sedgwick 1995). At times, the meaning of relationality may be taken for granted, but in reality it points in many directions. “In relation to what?” is hence, in spite of its almost vulgar rhetorical simplicity, an important question that we as gender studies scholars must continuously ask ourselves and our material as we investigate and problematize gender. Exactly which relations produce or maintain masculinities and certain gendered systems of power?
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Häyrén, A., Wahlström Henriksson, H. (2016). Introduction: Masculinity/Masculinities and Relationality. In: Häyrén, A., Wahlström Henriksson, H. (eds) Critical Perspectives on Masculinities and Relationalities . Crossroads of Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29012-6_1
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